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Lingrove (San Francisco, California) is emphasizing its partnership with Rockwest Composites (Salt Lake City, Utah) to develop next-generation trekking poles. These poles, used for hiking and backpacking, are made with a biobased epoxy prepreg, a natural fiber called Ekoa and carbon fiber. illustrating how these two composites can be combined for high performance as well as a natural look and feel. The highest performance trekking poles have typically been made of carbon fiber, while the lower-end poles use aluminum. Carbon fiber is favored because it's lighter and offers greater vibration damping over aluminium. Lingrove’s Ekoa tape exterior skin offers increased damping from injury-causing vibrations, with no loss of rigidity or increased weight. The subsequent unidirectional carbon fiber layers remain in the layup to provide the desired stiffness. The natural Ekoa look evokes wood because of the long linen fibers used as the plant-based reinforcementm rather. Ekoa tape also helps reduce cost compared to a woven carbon fiber. The poles are made with a wrap rolling process and cured at 250°F/121°C using Ekoa tape and standard commercial grade unidirectional carbon fiber epoxy prepreg. The two materials layup up together exhibiting no interstitial bonding issues with the carbon fiber layers. This same Ekoa/carbon fiber composites schedule and production process is applicable in a number of other applications, including paddles, ski poles and fishing rods.

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CAMX 2018 was held Oct. 15-18 in Dallas, and if you could not attend this year, CompositesWorld did it for you. This compendium of written and video reporting from the show is designed to bring you up to speed on the new products, trends, presentations and more that the show had to offer.